


surviving our histories is the hardest thing i'm ever gonna do

by AwayLaughing



Series: songs of monstrous grandeur and merciless devotion [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Family History, Gen, Grief/Mourning, InoShikaCho, Loss, No Plot/Plotless, just sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 03:43:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11638230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwayLaughing/pseuds/AwayLaughing
Summary: It is the highest tragedy of his life, that InoShikaChō should, in a single second, become just Chō. It is the second highest to realize he's seen this before, and just hadn't ever noticed.Or, Chōza on loss and family history and life despite it all.





	surviving our histories is the hardest thing i'm ever gonna do

Chōza’s earliest memory of Shikaku and Inoichi – one that was his and not some cobbled together facets from other peoples’ stories – was more of a mental photograph. They were 5, Shikaku dressed in formal _kimono_ and grinning widely to reveal two missing front teeth. Inoichi was armed with a piece of long grass, trying to get the dropping end into the space.

 

There was no context or memory attached to it. Time and age gave so many things, but it only robbed, when it came to recollection. Between that and now, there were myriad memories which ran together to create the bone-deep knowledge that they had always been together. Even when apart, there were letters and brief meetings. Megumi spoke to him once, of a cult who believed you were tied to the people in your life by invisible threads. Chōza believed it, almost. Believed he must have been born wrapped in those threads already.

 

After all, InoShikaChō was an institution with a longer history than any other in Konoha. Before the Senju hated the Uchiha, before the Hyūga gained any infamy, there was InoShikaChō. And it was his job to carry all that history. A solemn duty passed down from Akimichi head to head, one that only got heavier.

 

In his youth, Chōza had looked at his father’s stooped posture and been terrified of that duty – that burden. Had not understood that, by the time he was all of seven year old, he was carrying it already. Hadn’t understood that his father did not stoop from the weight of a burden too big even for his shoulders, but from a heavy heart.

 

Chōza hadn’t understood that until after Chōji’s birth, when his father’s mind finally went the way of his passion and started to drift away, leaving Chōya another confused old man. An old man who wept in the night, and who, upon getting out of the house once, encountered a random man in the street and promptly threw himself on the ground, weeping and begging.

 

“ _Forgive me, Shikahei. Forgive me.”_

 

For the man, the scene was off putting but nothing special, not once Chōya’s ailing mind was explained. To Chōza, it was a revelation.

 

No one spoke of Nara Shikahei. The missing Nara. A man who’s name was rarely spoken except in the darkest night, after far too much alcohol was drunk. He was a spectre from before the founding of Konoha, someone banished from the public lexicon. When people pictured the InoShikaChō who stood some steps from the first Hokage on the day of Konoha’s official founding, they pictured daunting Akimichi Chōya, impish Yamanaka Inohiko and silent Nara Shikae.

 

But watching his father die threw reality into sharp relief. From before Chōza ever drew breath, his father was a man who had loved someone fiercely, and who lost him. By the time Chōza was an adult, Inohiko was dead, too and there was a gulf the size of an ocean between Chōya and Shikae.

 

_The hardest – the worst thing in the world, my son, is to be the last one standing._

 

A truth, one his father's few. Sole survivor was understood to be a title no one wanted to bear. It ranked with traitor and failure for undesirable mantels. And now Chōza bore two of those - because what was more a failure than an Akimichi who stood while the Nara and Yamanaka fell? He was of sound mind, yes, but he thought he finally understood his father. Understood what it meant to feel so small and crippled and drowning in ghosts you somehow carved with your own hands.

 

_Take care of them._

 

_Be strong, Chōza._

 

Not _I love you_. Never that. But also, exactly that. Inoichi who showed his love with everything he had – if there were languages of love Inoichi was a polyglot. Shikaku who had a gem cutter’s eye, so capable of spotting the smallest fracture. Take care (I love you, because I trust you implicitly). Be strong, Chōza (I love you, because I've seen the flaws and I trust you anyway).

 

 _I will_ He said to them. To himself;  _I will take care of them, I will be strong_. Even if it was the hardest – the worst thing in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> This is very tied to completely random and unfounded headcanons I have about the Naras and the Konoha Founding Era which will, some day in the murky future, become clear. However, all that aside hopefully you can still feel for poor Chōza. No one ever wants to be the sole survivor, especially when the dead are your family.


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